Love Letters

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Live from Branson: The mayor and the cowboy

Branson was absurdly hot and sunny today, and it is absurd that we are still awake; I think we're pushing 36 hours at this point. Even more absurdly, I haven't had any coffee since breakfast:



We spent the early afternoon browsing historic downtown Branson, which is lined with flea markets, antique rummage stores, "bazaars," diners and a few out of place boutiques, including a five-and-dime that claims to be "just like the old times," shown here in this ridiculous portrait:



After a beer at Waxy O'Shea's (which sounds like a hiccup from a computerized generic-Irish-bar-name generator) we cruised the 76, Branson's strip of country gospel barns, mini golf courses and kitschy museums, on our way to Celebration City, a picturesque amusement park replete with fountains, bumper cars, an arcade and doo-wop music. Where, among other very important and interesting things, we rode a killer wooden coaster, saw a performance by some Ultimate Dogs (who were adorable, but mostly just good at catching frisbees), and MET THE MAYOR OF BRANSON, the lovely Raeanne Presley. Lovely, who are we kidding? She is a total babe, and very charming, and has a gorgeous accent, and is well dressed. Okay, I'll admit it: it's love.



Mayor Presley, by the way, is the wife of one of the members of the Presleys' Country Jubilee, Branson's original live show and the family dynasty that has made Branson into the live country music capital of the world. Suspicious, disingenuous or just plain confusing? Maybe it would be ... anywhere but here.

As we were driving home, the blaring sun finally sinking and the ice cream parlors all shutting down for the night, I saw what looked like a real (and really stunning) Missourah cowboy cross the street in muddy jeans, a white shirt and the sassy cowboy hats I keep seeing for sale on the street (which, by the way, look terrific on me):



We shared a glance and my heart fluttered. Branson, I might be wrong, but against my more pedestrian expectations, you might be out for my heart.

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Live from Branson: Say cheese

We thought about turning around in Rockford, mostly because neither of us could really grasp the concept of driving to Branson, Missouri in the middle of the night for no good reason, but we prevailed. I drank liters of coffee and Matt consumed an entire four-pack of Red Bull. (He also picked up some really inadvisable "energy spray" at a gas station in southern Illinois.) St. Louis came and went in a heartbeat. The sunrise chased us through the low, rolling hills of lower Missouri.

And here we are in muggy, disarming Branson, where breakfast is fast and cheap, the views are idyllic, and Yakov Smirnoff has his own theater. We've been up for almost 24 hours straight, but hey! Our hotel has an amazing view of Lake Taneycomo and we were greeted with a plate of cheese, fruit and crackers and a bottle of San Pellegino. Branson is onto something.

Decked out in our magazine-insider finest (huge glasses, dark clothing), we're about to grab a drink, naturally. Pictures, videos and hilarious exploits are to come (we have to find someplace in this sleepy outpost to find USB cables), so keep checking the site as we stumble around wondering what exactly it is we think we're doing here.

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Friday, May 30, 2008

The wayward season

I spent the long weekend in Michigan in what felt like a state of convalescence, although I have nothing to heal from besides a drumming anxiety that had welled up for no good reason and a persistent homesickness that had been creeping on me for weeks. And the drinking. Yes, there's that. Really, we all know it; I've been on a bender since February.

Often my trips home involve non-stop action: long days with little kids and dogs, big family dinners, mad late-night drives to downtown Detroit, whiskey on the river gazing toward Canada, biking through the ghetto, dance parties in apartments, etc. This time, despite an international electronic music festival, several significant local rock showcases and a best friend in town from Baltimore, I did very little besides sit in the sun and play fetch with the dogs. The most adventurous endeavor I made was into a poison-ivy and mosquito-infested woods to retrieve my dog's tennis ball and help my nephew climb out of a tree. The wildest time I had was in my best friend's backyard with two bottles of wine, the dregs of some whiskey, tall candles and a computer full of music. We stayed up until dawn, catching up with each other and making sense of things. I didn't go into the city at all. It was the closest I've come since graduating from high school to reliving the way I grew up: in the suburbs, antsy but anchored there, taken with the banal beauty of long lawns and long conversations, man-made ponds and dark, fresh skies.

On Memorial Day, I thought about how lucky it is that I haven’t lost anyone to a war. In South Carolina this week, my cousin was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force. He’s a careerist, trained at the Academy; he’s flown cargo planes all over the world, served in secret conflicts in Africa and Central Asia, trained Iraqi soldiers to fly fighter jets. He spent two years studying in Cairo and speaks fluent Arabic.

He’s older than I am, but we’re a lot alike: similarly smart, loving and warm, passionate about ideas, interested in the way the world works and concerned with getting it right. But we’ve pursued drastically different paths in life, and we’ll come to drastically different understandings of the world we inhabit. I tend to think of him as a kind of 21st century Indiana Jones, dusty, ballsy, full of tricks and tales of narrow escapes, resigned to his very exciting fate. I know it’s a fiction, but I stack my life up to it and feel boring at best, an underachiever at worst.

Then again, I know there are people who are stacking their lives up to the fictions that follow me around, too; the industrious days of the magazine editor, the glamorous nights of the big-city social ambassador. Those tall tales make me feel small, too, when the primary source of my life’s excitement of late has been driving too fast on the interstate, riding my bike down busy streets and wondering whether or not I’m going to make rent.



I just finished reading Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough, the extraordinary story of the bank robbers and highway murderers who “terrorized” the nation during 1933 and 1934. (Yes, this is the Public Enemies upon which the Michael Mann/Johnny Depp movie is based; I’d recommend the book regardless, but especially if you’ve been following the making of the film. Burrough goes to exhausting lengths to correct the Hollywood-ization of criminals like Bonnie & Clyde and Ma Barker; it’s a mind-warp to think about an adaptation of his book starring Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover.) The author is careful to avoid glamorizing criminals, but I can’t help but imagine myself in idle moments as an outlaw, living by sweat and wit, tough as nails, ambling through dark parts of the country in desperation or in triumph, trying to run out the clock, or outsmart it. It’s an absurd legend to live by, but captivating.

But the summer holds promise, of adventure, if not of crime: I’m conserving as much as possible at home and saving the miles for strange and terrific journeys. Maybe western Wisconsin's driftless zone, maybe the Sleeping Bear Dunes in the Leelenau Peninsula, hopefully Baltimore, with any luck a spur-of-the-moment road trip to New York City. And to kick-start the wayward season, stay tuned next week for live updates from – I kid you not – Branson, Missouri. You heard it here first – more details to come.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Permission to party

Chicago dodged a bullet this week when it tabled the now-notorious "promoter's ordinance," which would have made it necessary for independent music promoters in the city to obtain a license to the tune of $500 - $2000 and at least $300,000 in liability insurance. The legislation, targeted at venues with less than 500 "fixed seats", outraged Chicago's music community, and with good reason: in any city, including Milwaukee, this ordinance would be certain and sudden death for a local music scene trying to stay on its feet. Clubs and bars that host live music are already licensed by the city, subject to building and occupancy codes and required to have liability insurance.

The potential consequences of the promoter's ordinance are obvious: fewer shows, higher cover charges, harder times for upstanding business owners, criminalized concerts. The law is so broadly worded that even bands who book their own shows could be considered "illegal promoters." It's bad news. It's narrow-sighted, fuddy-duddy lawmaking.

I cringe to imagine a city in which the only "legal" concerts are at muscular venues who can afford to host nationally touring acts. I guess I'm young and naive, but god dammit, I want lawmakers to get their faces out of my good times. I want the paternalism to stop. I want the suburbanization of the places and parties I hold dear to stop, stop, stop.

In Milwaukee, a great deal of great things are happening in groundswells of brilliant ideas, passionate people and sweaty, back-breaking, frustrating work. Even the stodgiest members of our local media have become fashionably aware that much of Milwaukee's cultural life takes place in back rooms, basements, secret clubs, fly-by-night theaters, abandoned submarines at the bottom of the lake, etc. It's chic, edgy and dangerous now, but THIS IS HOW THE WORLD WAS MADE. In the grand sweep of human history, we haven't been applying for permits to make music, show art or throw parties for very long. And I don't think that's a mark of our progress.

The Echo Base Collective is officially defunct after a few brief but shining months in a Fifth Ward warehouse. After a cop raid and a warning to stop throwing "illegal raves," they stopped having amazing local rock shows. Now, after weeks of runaround from the police and a handful of post-dated citations including failure to acquire an occupancy permit, their building was condemned and the Base members evicted. Now three people are homeless and more than 200 bicycles, many of them donated to the Collective by the Boys and Girls Club to be fixed up and distributed to kids for free, are going to languish as gas prices skyrocket and our transit system goes broke. Did Echo Base do everything right? No. But everyone involved was trying to better the community, and no one was getting hurt.

I went to a residential college with an extremely liberal alcohol philosophy. It was smart thinking – by allowing us to hang out and drink whenever and wherever we wanted, without any trouble, as long as we behaved like adults, the college saved itself a lot of time and effort policing its student body, and it saved its student body a lot of binge drinking, alcohol poisoning and unsafe behavior. We had to abide by a few simple rules – no keggers, no drinking games, no stupidity – in exchange for a lot of freedom. Security guards came to our parties, made sure everything was cool, and continued their patrol. No one was afraid that they'd "get in trouble" if they called for help when someone was sick from too much drugs or booze.

My naked idealism is showing, and I've been surprised by the mysterious ultra-libertarian/anti-authoritarian streak that the convergence of the Chicago proposal and the Echo Base's untimely end has awakened in me. And I'm sure it will pass. But for now I'm just irked. Jesus Christ, I just want to dance at parties, and I want the man to leave me alone.

In a less infuriating act of meddling by a major local institution, Mary Louise Schumacher at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tried to stir up the pot today with an article questioning the good faith and "insularity" of the Milwaukee International Art Fair, taking place this weekend at Polish Falcons. The article alleges that the Fair, which has an explicit and publicly stated mission to bring INTERNATIONAL ART to Milwaukee, isn't doing a just job of representing galleries from ... Milwaukee. Apparently local gallerists have complained! Apparently, members of our local art community are offended that they were not asked! I guess if you're going to throw an International Art Fair, you better take a few breaks from your calls to Japan and Cuba and make sure you invite everyone in the city who might be interested in joining the party, just so you don't hurt anybody's feelings.

To which I say: boo the fuck hoo. Organize your own International Art Fair. Or just plan an event that coincides with the International Art Fair! In fact, the Fair's organizers have invited you to do so!

Remember: amazing happenings (or anywhere) only happen after TRUCKLOADS of work. If you want to give yourself a pat on the back after bleeding out of your eyes for two years to put Milwaukee's only International Art Fair together by ceding three of your five local booths to your organizer's galleries, GOOD FOR YOU. KEEP AT IT. And don't let the Journal Sentinel's whiny reporters keep you down.

We are too smart for that in this city. Kudos to Faythe Levine of Paper Boat Gallery, who not only organizes her own wildly successful, thoroughly fabulous art party every year (yep, Art Vs. Craft), but who dealt with her frustration at being excluded during the first International Art Fair by refusing to take no for an answer and persisting with her convincing argument that Paper Boat would be a good fit for the show. She's in this year. If at first you don't succeed, don't cry about it. Try again.

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

“Ball don’t lie.” - Rasheed Wallace

I don't know how or why it happens, but every year it's like the flip of a switch: someone or something reminds me that basketball exists. And that I love it. And that the Pistons fucking rule.

This year I was standing in the dark cavern of the Echo Base warehouse, beholding my spring bike strewn about the shop in pieces (soon to be resurrected as less of a death trap), when my phone rang. It was Fernando, a friend from Ann Arbor, one member of a small pod of Michiganeers-cum-Milwaukeeans I associate with here.

"You watching the Pistons game tonight?"

"What game?" I asked, completely unprepared for the flush of basketball fever that was about to bring me to my knees.

"I thought you were a Pistons fan? It's a pretty important game in the series."

An hour later, I was sitting at the bar in the dark cavern of Major Goolsbys, sharing a pitcher of Spotted Cow, stupid with the thrill of an imminent victory over the Sixers – a total about-face from my everyday life and identity. Damn.

Days later, my best friend from home called from Baltimore, where he works as a homesick public radio producer. Our lives run on crossed threads, even at great distances – we've only ever been at great distances, in fact, since we graduated from high school six years ago.

"I don't know what to do tonight," he said. "I feel like drinking a little too much and being drunk a little too early."

"That's all I've been doing," I said, "all week. Because of the playoffs."

"The playoffs?" he said. "Is there a game tonight?"

It's some sort of tic in the expatriate Detroiter subconscious. When you miss the city you come from – not just because you don’t live there, but because you know it’s never going to be the city you wish it could be, because every time you go back it’s a little stranger, a little more fantastical – you let yourself believe in anything that makes you feel a part of it again. If it’s the NBA – so be it.

When the playoffs are over – or when the Pistons are out of the series – I’ll stop going to the bar straight from work and I won’t drink so much Spotted Cow. I probably won’t return to Major Goolsby’s, maybe not even next year – who knows where my Michigan crew will roll then, or if any of them will even live here anymore.

I’ll think about 2005, when I was lonely, tired and frustrated in Turkey’s southeastern desert, when I got a text message about the Spurs’ victory over the Pistons and broke down crying in the middle of the market. I’ll think about 2006, when we lost to the Heat and impenetrable, infuriating Shaquille O’Neal, and I mourned quietly in my parents’ chilly basement in the suburbs, watching him say, in an interview with a bimbo sportscasterette, that he was looking forward to the day his kids could look up to him and say, “Daddy was a bad motha-shut-yo-mouth.”

I’ll think about the 2004 championship, drinking Heineken in a friend’s parked car all night to celebrate, sneaking into the strip mall where we worked and smoking cigarettes in the women’s bathroom. And how the playoffs made all of the hard-knock, tough-love men I worked with at the guitar store come together in the cause of something great and powerful, and how when we closed up for the night they would all join forces to sneak me into the sleazy bar across the highway so I could watch the game. We all embraced when it was over, in triumph when we won and in comfort when we lost. By the time we won the playoffs, I’d been initiated into a brotherhood, and I spent my whole summer cavorting with them, going to see their loud cover bands play in backyards, drinking whiskey by bonfires, cruising the empty highways of Detroit too late at night. Basketball made it all possible.

I’m ready for this summer to really get moving. I think it’s going to be amazing. But the first glimmer of enchantment and magic, for my whole adult life, has been the playoffs. This year has been no different, even though watching the playoffs from Milwaukee isn’t the same at all.

(When not hunkered down at M.G.s with my ragtag roundtable of kids from the mitten state, I’ve somehow managed to wander into a great deal of art openings, and it’s been very exciting: Dwellephant’s cupcake show at Eat Cake was delightful, even amidst torrential downpours; Jeff Kenney -- who plied me with chardonnay -- and Neil Rongstad showed standout work at a lovely new show at the Katie Gingrass Gallery and down the street, Hot Pop blew my damned mind. This store is straight outta Tokyo, or at least the most painfully cool neighborhoods of New York City, and totally defies description: deck art, graphic novels, urban fashion, sneakers, movies, really crazy toys and a gallery full of edgy, colorful artwork from Milwaukee and Chicago. It’s worth a visit or ten. Tonight I’ll be at the grand opening of The Armoury – and maybe The Blatz Building?

If you’re an ex-member of Michigan, or if you really love Detroit basketball, and you want to join our team of ne’er-do-wells, boozers and burger lovers for a game or two, leave a comment. I’ll be in touch.)

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